Employing the technique known as “trompe-l’oeil,” designers have mimicked three-dimensional surfaces to elevate rooms. Le Grand Tour wallpaper, from Schumacher with the designer Johnson Hartig, ...

Scientists who study monkeyflowers sometimes feel as though the plants are looking back at them. The blooms are said to resemble the faces of playful monkeys—hence the name—complete with a speckled ...

We independently select these products—if you buy from one of our links, we may earn a commission. All prices were accurate at the time of publishing. According to Chasing Paper, block prints — ...

Wallpaper used to make us think kitsch. And that might not have been your intended result. But now, kitsch is in and wallpaper is back. It’s been showing up everywhere, giving instant personality to ...

It began as a strange discovery buried in chaos theory — a mathematical pattern that seemed to predict real events before they happened. From climate shifts to stock market crashes, scientists now ...

Prime numbers are sometimes called math’s “atoms” because they can be divided by only themselves and 1. For two millennia, mathematicians have wondered if the prime numbers are truly random, or if ...

Mary Kathryn Wells and Chris Vinyard dealt with the “sensory insanity” of their open floor plan home by dousing it in bright colors and bold patterns. The interior designer Mary Kathryn Wells and her ...

Last year, onlookers observed a startling site on China’s Qiantang River: waves forming a grid-like pattern. Dubbed the “matrix tide,” this complex wave pattern was caused by the river’s famed tidal ...

Katie has a PhD in maths, specializing in the intersection of dynamical systems and number theory. She reports on topics from maths and history to society and animals. Katie has a PhD in maths, ...

If color drenching is the trendy baby of the family, then consider pattern drenching its timeless, wiser older sister. A design trick oft referred to as ‘à la Française,’ or in the manner of the ...